


Katsaridaphilia

by Noëlle McHenry (Quasi_Detective)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Birthday Cake, Children, Cockroaches, Complete, Contest Entry, Corpses, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Depressing, Depression, Disturbing Themes, Family Issues, Fucked Up, Gen, Halloween Challenge, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Inspired by Art, One Shot, Parent-Child Relationship, Prompt Fic, Translation Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 10:05:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12363339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quasi_Detective/pseuds/No%C3%ABlle%20McHenry
Summary: Katsaridaphilian: an abnormal attraction to cockroaches.1st Place winner of the 2017 Halloween Horror Collab Challenge on Horror Writer Amino.





	Katsaridaphilia

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Français available: [Katsaridaphilie](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12949770) by [Quasi_Detective](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quasi_Detective/pseuds/Quasi_Detective)
  * Translation into 日本語 available: [蜚蠊性愛](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12953079) by [Quasi_Detective](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quasi_Detective/pseuds/Quasi_Detective)



> Arguably the most fucked up thing I've ever written. You have been warned.
> 
> [Cover art](http://www.writerscafe.org/uploads/stories/c8db15edb503c4fd0f8ff3ea9e3e650a.png) by [BavaLamp](https://www.instagram.com/bavalamp/).

Suzy was seven years old, and she wasn’t afraid of bugs. Her classmates both feared and revered her and her stoicism in the face of the various creepy crawlies found on the playground’s pavement. Revered, because she would take them out of sight without complaint. Feared, because she would often hide them in her backpack. No one knew whether those bugs came back inside with her, but they assumed that they did after a six-year-old found a beetle on his lunch bag and cried.  
            She was often told that she was the spitting image of her mommy, with their matching blonde hair and similar faces. But mommy always told her that she had daddy’s nose. Where daddy was, Suzy didn’t know; she’d never met him, and the only picture of him she’d ever seen was of him and mommy on their prom night. Suzy didn’t like to think that she looked like either of them. She wanted her face to be her own, not pieces of others’.  
            Her lips were the part of her face most often compared to her mommy’s. They both had a bow-like shape, with the upper lip having a particular curve to it. She hated sharing her lips with mommy. One of them had to change. When she was six, after looking at pictures in magazines, she’d looked up at her and asked, “Mommy, can I change my lips?”  
            Mommy had laughed and patted her head. “Oh, darling . . . Why would you want to do that? Your lips are perfect the way they are.”  
            Suzy had thought about that; mommy was right, she didn’t want to change her lips. But the dilemma still remained that her lips would never be hers alone. “Then would you change yours?”  
            Selfish mommy had shook her head. “I don’t think so, sweetie. I like my lips.”  
            Unlike Suzy, mommy was afraid of bugs. She hated most of all bugs with antennae and wings, Suzy’s favorite kind. When Suzy was five, they’d lived in an apartment complex, but left when mommy found out that the wooden staircase railing had termites. Not to mention the cockroaches in the basement . . . Suzy didn’t know why her mommy hated cockroaches so much. She’d always wanted one as a pet, herself. What was there to hate about them and their six, fuzzy little legs?  
            They’d left the apartment behind, but Suzy still had the two duplicate keys that her mother had given her to make her feel grown up. She’d watched her mother open the front door of the building several times, and it was right next to her school. So, she was always tempted to go in there and see if there were still roaches in the basement and take some home, but there was never a chance for her to do so. . . . At least, not until the Friday before her eighth birthday. That day, mommy was late picking her up. When she walked out of the school and saw that her car wasn’t there, she felt her eyes light up.  
            Now was her chance!  
            She ran with her pink backpack bouncing on her back, holding onto the straps. Her blonde pigtails flew behind her as she zoomed away from the school and up the stairs to the apartment building. The keys were always in the front pocket of her backpack, underneath her pencil bag. She pulled them out. One was silver, the other gold. If she remembered correctly, the gold key was only for the apartment itself. Mommy had always used the silver one outside.  
            She reached up, having to stand on her toes to reach the lock. Then, she plunged the key into it. Before doing anything else, she glanced back toward the school. Mommy’s car still wasn’t there. The front door unlocked, and Suzy pulled it. It was heavy, but she managed to squeeze through the small opening she made.  
            Inside, the wallpaper was peeling. The front area was dark, the light above her burnt out. There was a little bit of light coming from the second floor, and even less from the basement, but Suzy wasn’t afraid of the dark. How could she be? She was too excited about trying to find the cockroaches.  
            She skipped down into the basement. The light down there, at the far right end of the run-down hallway, was flickering like it was about to go out. Suzy turned to the left. She knew that there was a laundry room down here with its door unlocked. She and mommy had gone into it only once. Then mommy screamed when she saw a cockroach on the wall, and ran out, dragging Suzy by the wrist.  
            Walking further away from the light, Suzy made her way into the darkest side of the hallway. There was a door at the end that didn’t look like it had a number on it, so she reached up and grabbed the doorknob, twisting it. The door drifted open with a creak. It was pitch black in there, and Suzy could hear something that would’ve made her classmates squeamish. It sounded like the crawling of many, many insects.  
            Suzy was a smart girl. She knew that there had to be a light switch somewhere, but the problem was being able to reach it. So she felt along the wall to her left, trying to find a broom or something. Anything long enough for her to try to poke the light switch up on her own. But before she found anything, something crawled onto her hand and moved sluggishly up her arm.  
            Excited, Suzy left the laundry room and walked to the light. She could see it there: halfway up her forearm, a brown cockroach about the size of her palm. She beamed at the insect with wonder that only a child could express. Then, she looked back down the hall.  
            A dozen or so cockroaches had begun following her, spreading out across the floor like water. She admired their curiosity, and also felt like they saw her as their queen for letting them out. Looking down at the cockroach on her arm, she crooned, “Cute little baby. I’m going to name you Mary, and take you and your friends home with me so you can be happy!”  
            Careful not to knock Mary off of her arm, Suzy took off her backpack and placed it onto the floor. She unzipped it and took out her brown paper lunch bag, leaving it on the floor. Then, she brushed Mary off, into the backpack. She spent a few minutes skipping around the hallway, picking up the cockroaches and dropping them in as if she were doing a scavenger hunt. Soon, the bag was so full of the squirming roaches that some of them poured out over the sides.  
            “Time to go! Mommy’s probably waiting!” She zipped up the bag, but not all the way; the last thing she wanted was for her crawly little friends to suffocate. To the remaining cockroaches, she exclaimed, “Be free!”  
            She hurried up the stairs and back outside. Sure enough, mommy’s dark green car was in front of the school, right on time. She ran back toward it and hopped in, eagerness plain to see not only on her face, but in the way she moved.  
            Mommy looked back at her with her brow knitted in concern. “What were you doing in there?” she asked. “Why weren’t you waiting in the school for me?”  
            “You took too long,” replied Suzy, grinning. “So I visited some friends!”  
            Mommy turned her dark-ringed eyes back onto the windshield, and Suzy watched her shudder. Her own blonde hair was done up in a messy ponytail. “Sweetie, I don’t want you going back into that building again, okay? And don’t go off with friends without telling me. It’s dangerous.”  
            “Okay, mommy.” Suzy might’ve argued, but at the moment, she was too pleased with the catch in her backpack.  
            The drive home took ten minutes, during which Suzy blathered on about how her day at school was. Occasionally, mommy would let out a weak hum in response, but mostly she didn’t make any sound at all. Their front yard was anything but grassy, as were the yards beside theirs. Their next door neighbor had trash bags piled around their garbage bin, which had fallen over at some point. Mommy helped Suzy out of the car and took her hand in hers as they walked to their front door. There was a paper there that Suzy didn’t bother to look at, even as mommy stopped in her tracks and held her hand tighter.  
            “Mommy,” Suzy complained, “let’s go inside. It’s cold, and I have to pee.”  
            Mommy reached up and ripped the paper off of the door with her free hand, crumpling it. Then, she unlocked the door and opened it. Suzy yanked herself free and hurried upstairs. Her first stop was her bedroom, where she dropped her backpack to the floor. Bringing her eye down to the unzipped part of the bag, she peered in. It looked like all of the cockroaches were still in there. She saw one walking up the inner side of the bag, and she pulled back to clap, giddy. Because of mommy’s delay, she had been able to get herself the best birthday present ever.  
            “I’ll be right back,” she said to her best friends. Then, she got up and went into the bathroom to relieve herself. As she sat on the toilet, she wagged her legs and hummed.  
            The bathroom was the filthiest room in the house, but Suzy didn’t think it was unusual, or even gross. All her life, she’d seen bathrooms like this. This one was even less filthy than the one in their apartment. When they first moved into the house, mommy had made an effort to keep everything clean. But then she gave up, after her boyfriend stopped calling her back.  
            Suzy already knew that she didn’t want to have a boyfriend when she got older. She didn’t want a boring boy who would leave her one day. No, she wanted to marry a cockroach. Her Prince Charming was an image of a giant roach, wearing a pink cape. Pink was her favorite color, after all. In her young mind, she thought that love happened when two people liked the same things. She could only assume that mommy and daddy must've liked different things.  
            After she left the bathroom, she wanted to return to the cockroaches at once, but then mommy called up to her: “Suzy? Sweetie, come downstairs.” She sounded sad. But then again, she’d been sounding sad ever since she started drinking raspberry juice every night. Suzy was never allowed to drink any, because mommy called it an “adult drink”. Her selfishness frustrated her. The raspberry juice must have been delicious for her to keep drinking it, and yet Suzy had never even tasted a _drop_ of it!  
            She knew that mommy would start crying if she didn’t obey, so she called back “Coming, mommy!” before hurrying downstairs. She found her standing in the dining room. On the table were some papers in a pile, including the one she’d crumpled into a ball. Beside the pile was an opened bottle of raspberry juice.  
            Mommy’s hair was a mess. She hadn’t brushed it in over a month, but she still made Suzy brush her own. Another thing that bothered the little girl. Why was mommy allowed to not brush her hair every morning? It wasn’t fair.  
            Her mommy stepped toward her on wobbly legs, then kneeled down in front of her and rubbed her rounded cheeks with her skinny hands. She looked like she might start crying anyway, but instead, she put on a pained smile and asked, “What do you say we celebrate your birthday now?”  
            “Yes!” Suzy jumped for joy. To her it was only fitting that they celebrate now, since she already had her present.  
            Mommy rustled Suzy’s square bangs before standing up. “Sit down at the table, darling.”  
            Suzy obediently did as she was told. Mommy walked into the kitchen, and Suzy watched her open the fridge. She reached in and pulled out a little box. Before presenting it to Suzy, she went behind the fridge and opened a drawer. After a beat, she picked up the box and started approaching, revealing a small slice of chocolate cake.  
            “ _Happy Birthday to you_ ,” she sung in a shaky voice, her weathered face lit by a single glowing candle. “ _Happy Birthday to you_. _Happy Birthday, dear Suzy_ . . .” She put the cake down and lovingly pinched her daughter’s nose. “ _Happy Birthday to you_. Make a wish, sweetheart.”  
            Looking up at her mommy’s lips, Suzy knew exactly what to wish for. She lowered her head toward the candle and blew it out.  
            She ate the entire slice of cake herself, and mommy watched her do it. Then, she watched cartoons until seven, at which point mommy reminded her that it was time for bed. By herself, she went upstairs, brushed her teeth, and put on her pink nightgown. It wasn’t until she got into bed and noticed her backpack on the floor that she remembered about her cockroaches, and she gasped. As if her life depended on it, she leapt out of bed and hurried to the bag. Rather than peer into the hole, she decided to open it all the way.  
            It was empty, but for one cockroach. She reached in and picked it up.  
            “Mary, you’re still here!” She beamed. “But where did your friends go?”  
            As if answering her, the cockroach’s antennae twitched.  
            Suzy looked around the room. She couldn’t see any cockroaches. So, she tilted her head and looked under the bed. None there, either.  
            She felt abandoned, and she looked down at Mary. “At least I still have you . . .”  
            To make herself feel better, she did what she usually did when she felt blue: she went to the stairs, walked halfway down, and sat. She brought Mary with her for extra comfort. The cockroach remained still on the back of her hand, only moving its antennae. It seemed at ease in her presence, and that made her feel better.  
            She had only been sitting there for a minute when she suddenly heard mommy crying. Curious, she looked through the beams supporting the railing. From there, she could see the dining room.  
            Mommy sat at the table, one hand on her head, and the other on another bottle of raspberry juice. She sobbed as she stared down at the papers and envelopes laid out in front of her. Squinting her eyes, Suzy could see the words EVICTION NOTICE written in red across one of them. She didn’t know what the words meant, and thus couldn’t figure out why they were making mommy cry so hard.  
            Suzy put Mary down on the stair behind her. “Stay here,” she whispered to the roach. Then, she stood up and went the rest of the way downstairs. She approached her bawling mommy with caution, but grew impatient when she wasn’t noticed. “Mommy?”  
            Mommy gasped and dropped her raspberry juice. Luckily, it fell toward Suzy rather than toward the papers. The glass bottle tipped over the side of the table and fell to the floor, where it shattered in a wet spray. Suzy watched it break, unfazed.  
            “Suzy, baby.” Mommy sniffled and rubbed her eyes. She smiled again, trying to cover up her crying. “I thought you were asleep.”  
            “I was sad,” Suzy told her.  
            Mommy frowned again. She looked hurt, like Suzy’s sadness was tragic to her. She stood up and walked around the table, careful to avoid the broken glass as she kneeled down and hugged her.  
            “Oh, sweetie,” she moaned. “Don’t be sad. Everything’s going to be okay. Things . . . Things will work out.” The croak in her voice made her words sound less like the truth and more like a desperate hope.  
            “Are you going to sleep, too?”  
            Mommy nodded into the crook of her neck. “When you wake up, I want you to phone your grandparents. You know how to do that, right?”  
            “I think so.”  
            “Tell them to pick you up.”  
            “Should I wake you up when they get here?”  
            Mommy cradled the back of her head in her hand. “No, darling, no . . . Let me sleep . . .”  
            Suzy thought that was unusual. Mommy never let her answer the door on her own. But she didn’t question it. “Okay.”  
            “I’m going to clean up this mess and go to sleep . . . Go back to bed, all right?”  
            “Okay,” Suzy repeated. As she headed for the stairs, mommy stopped her by saying her name in a low, miserable voice.  
            “Suzy? I love you.”  
            “Love you too, mommy,” Suzy replied, as casual as ever. When she went up the stairs and tried to find Mary again, she discovered that the roach had left. And though she felt sad again, she decided to listen to her mommy and go to bed despite it. She could find the bugs in the morning.  
            When she woke up, the first thing she did was look into her backpack in the hopes that her cockroaches had returned. They hadn’t. She needed to find them, even if it scared her mommy to hear that she’d brought a bagful of roaches into the house. Maybe they would move to somewhere nicer if she told her.  
            As she stood outside mommy’s room, she hesitated before knocking. She remembered how she’d told her to let her sleep . . . but this was important. There was no way she was going to call her grandparents to pick her up without finding her cockroaches first. So, she knocked on the door.  
            “Mommy. Mommy, I need help.” When there was no answer, she knocked harder. “Mommy?”  
            The raspberry juice always made mommy tired. She’d have to wake her up by shaking her or something. But when she opened the door, she was immediately struck by a brick wall of stink. It smelled terrible in mommy’s room. “Mommy, were you sick?”  
            There was no answer from mommy, who was still lying in bed with her face tilted out of Suzy’s sight. The little girl approached, breathing through her mouth, and climbed up onto the soft bed. She was about to shake her mommy when she noticed the little white candies lying beside her. They were coming out of an orange bottle, the kind that a doctor would give to her in a white bag. Another thing that mommy had to herself, that Suzy was never allowed to have. She’d called it “adult candy, to help with the pain”. She wasn’t in pain, so she decided not to eat them. Instead, she returned her attention to mommy.  
            “Mommy. _Mom_ my. Wake up,” she demanded. This would wake her up: “I need to find my cockroaches!”  
            But there was no reaction, not even the groan and wave mommy usually did before turning over. So, Suzy reached out her hand and placed it onto her shoulder.  
            “Mommy?”  
            She got closer and looked down at her mommy’s face. A surge of an unfamiliar feeling—fear—coursed through her when she saw it. Mommy’s eyes were open halfway. She looked almost normal . . .  
            . . . Except, her lips were missing.  
            Before Suzy could reel away in horror, a sight that should’ve unnerved her further did the exact opposite; she watched as a single cockroach squeezed itself out of mommy’s mouth. It crawled toward her, and she held out her hand. It stopped on the back and twitched its antennae, and Suzy grinned.  
            “Mary!” she exclaimed. “You came back!”  
            The return of her favorite roach led Suzy to a thought. Carefully, she scooched herself back, off of the bed. She grabbed the edge of the blanket, then threw it to the floor.  
            There were cockroaches everywhere. They were on the blanket, on the bed sheets, and all over mommy, whose white nightgown was stained near the bottom. The smell that had bothered her intensified, but she paid it no mind. Instead, she watched the roaches crawl around her mommy’s pale, bloated legs. Then, Suzy screamed, but not in terror. Rather, she screamed out of delight. After all, by eating mommy’s lips away during the night, her beloved cockroaches had granted her wish.


End file.
